1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to converting data represented in a nonlinear colorspace into a linear floating point format and, more specifically, to converting sRGB colorspace data into a linear floating point format.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nonlinear colorspaces, such as sRGB may be used to efficiently represent colors and to ease the exchange of color data between different color devices, e.g., display or print devices. Image color data used as texture maps for graphics processing may be represented in a nonlinear colorspace. Rather than convert the nonlinear colorspace texture map, a graphics processor may process the texture map as if it were represented in a linear colorspace. The resulting output image may include visual artifacts that would not be present if the texture map were converted to a native (linear) colorspace prior to being processed by the graphics processor.
Accordingly, there is a desire to process texture maps stored in a nonlinear colorspace while reusing existing texture filtering units in a graphics processor that are designed to process linear colorspace texture data.